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Intervention Effects Follow from Focus Interpretation*

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The paper provides a semantic analysis of intervention effects in wh-questions. The interpretation component of the grammar derives uninterpretability, hence ungrammaticality, of the intervention data. In the system of compositional interpretation that I suggest, wh-phrases play the same role as focused phrases, introducing alternatives into the computation. Unlike focus, wh-phrases make no ordinary semantic contribution. An intervention effect occurs whenever a focus-sensitive operator other than the question operator tries to evaluate a constituent containing a wh-phrase. It is argued that this approach can capture the universal as well as the crosslinguistically variable aspects of intervention effects, in a way that is superior to previous approaches. Further consequences concern other focus-related constructions: multiple focus data, NPI licensing, and alternative questions.

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  1. Institut für Linguistik, Universität Potsdam, Postfach 601553, D-14415, Potsdam, Germany

    Sigrid Beck

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  1. Sigrid Beck
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Correspondence to Sigrid Beck.

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* Many thanks to Irene Heim, Elke Kasimir, Bill Ladusaw, Craige Roberts, and two anonymous referees for important comments on the prefinal version. I am also grateful to Hani Babu, Reinier van den Born, Liang Chen, Lisa Cheng, Danny Fox, Elena Guerzoni, Fabian Heck, Ji-yung Kim, Shin-Sook Kim, Angelika Kratzer, Luisa Marti, Cecile Meier, Toshiko Oda, Sei-Rang Oh, Ning Pan, David Pesetsky, Tanya Reinhart, Sugunya Ruangjaroon, Uli Sauerland, Yael Sharvit, Arnim von Stechow, Satoshi Tomioka as well as audiences at UMass, UConn, Universität Frankfurt, Universität Tübingen, and ‘Sinn and Bedeutung 8’. Special thanks to the organizers of the 2004 Michigan Workshop in Linguistics and Philosophy, Josh Brown and Rich Thomason, as well as the workshop participants. Finally, I would like to thank my informants for the survey: Jonathan Bobaljik, Christine Brisson, Sarah Felber, Kyle Johnson, Lisa Matthewson, Karen OBrian, and William Snyder for English, and Klaus Abels, Annett Eichstätt, Cornelia Endriss, Stephen Kepser, Winnie Lechner, Reimar Müller, Albert Ortmann, Irene Rapp, Frank Richter, and Ede Zimmermann for German.

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Beck, S. Intervention Effects Follow from Focus Interpretation*. Nat Lang Seman 14, 1–56 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-005-4532-y

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